


To Those I Left Behind

by Wisteria_Mutterings



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Canonical Character Death, Family, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Ben Hargreeves, Past Abuse, Sad, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2020-12-13 20:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21004025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisteria_Mutterings/pseuds/Wisteria_Mutterings
Summary: Just because Klaus is the only one who can see him doesn’t mean he’s the only sibling Ben spends time with.Or: A collection of times Ben Hargreeves visits his family.





	1. The Horror

Just because Klaus is the only one who can see him doesn’t mean he’s the only sibling Ben spends time with.

Ben doesn’t really know how being a ghost works. He’s never much bothered trying to figure it out. Death was one thing, being dead was another. It came with a whole new set of rules, cans and can’ts. At first all he could do was cry. Klaus started drinking and passing out and waking up to do it again. At first Ben tried hard to leave him alone, but the only thing scarier than being the horror was being the dead horror, and Ben needed his family.

But often enough his family wasn’t there, and Ben was left to float around alone.

Often he ended up following Pogo, just to have someone to follow.  
Often his mother was around his father and if there was anyone Ben did not want to see it was his father. 

The house looked different as a ghost. It became a kind of cage, with bars he could slip through but no one else could. His siblings left, one by one, two by two. Reginald didn't try to stop them.

(He never tried to stop much of anything, Ben reminds himself.)

When that got too much he went and sat with his statue. He wished his father had picked a different quote for the base of it. There is nothing light about him now. Ben feels as though he’s made of the same metal that damn monument is made of.

Finally, Ben comes to the conclusion that being dead wouldn’t be so bad.

If it wasn’t so damn lonely.


	2. The Rumor

The first sibling Ben visited was Allison. 

He didn’t mean to, at the time he couldn’t even figure out how he’d done it. One minute he was drifting around her room, looking over her pictures and jewelry, and the next he was in a crowded room.

Allison didn’t look nervous. She never did.

“Allison Hargreeves.”

Ben felt that tug in his gut (or at least, he thought, where my gut used to be) and began to follow after her, drifting through the door as it closed into the audition room.  
When she spoke he could have cried. He knew she’d rumor her way into the role but he also knew she didn’t have to. Allison spoke the lines like she was born to them, her voice lilted and shifted with the tone. Her soft fingers flitted around to emphasize her words. There was no spotlight in the room but she stole it anyway. Ben was lost in amazement at watching her. She had always been so natural in the way she communicated. He guessed this was why Luther fell in love with her, she could make two words sound like a presidential speech.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hargreeves.”

Allison put the script down and stared at the panel of judges.

“I heard a rumor that I’m perfect for this role, and you’re going to hire me for it.”

And Ben knew it was her voice that made him believe her, but he also knew he would have believed her even if she hadn’t. She was perfect. She always had been. It had never been a rumor.

He was at her wedding. Luther was on the moon by then, Diego didn’t come, Klaus was in rehab, Vanya had a recital and there was no invitation issued to their father. She looked so beautiful, then, and Ben was struck by all the times she had imagined this moment as a child. All the times that she had pinned pictures of brides to her wall, all the interviews where she’d winked or flirted with the male celebrities around them. 

(And he wished, then, that he could go back in time, find the young Allison crooning over weddings and tell her how amazing hers was. How there were pictures of it on the cover of magazines for weeks to come. How beautiful her smile was as her new husband wiped a blob of frosting from the corner of her mouth. How the flowers she held glistened with tiny drops of water, that caught the jewels in her dress and surrounded her in a halo of glimmering light. How her dress had a train long enough that all seven of them could have piled onto it if they had still been ten. How he’d wanted nothing more, in that moment, for them all to be ten again.)  
He didn’t know if it was right or not but he walked with her down the aisle, next to her agent, who had met her through a brief phone call which had consisted of ten words. 

For a while when she was a baby, Claire could see him. Ben didn’t visit Allison too often then, she seemed stressed or wasn’t home frequently. When he did, however, baby Claire would gurgle from her crib and Ben would float above her and make funny faces. Once, when Allison had just gotten home from a red-eye flight and baby Claire was fussy, Ben tried to touch her, to rub her back and soothe her back into sleep, but it didn’t work. His hand passed through the baby with a familiar static tingle. By the time she could talk she couldn’t see Ben anymore, and as hard as he tried to get his niece to notice him, she could not. She had joined the rest of her aunts and uncles in the world that Ben no longer existed in, and Allison’s home became a graveyard, where his only niece had once known his face to be a bright one, and now didn’t even know he’d ever existed.

Allison visited Ben too, once. She must have been in the area for something or feeling nostalgic, or just decided she wanted to see Luther. It was before the wedding, the child, the big breakthrough. She was still so young.  
She stood in front of Ben’s statue and stared up at it.  
“I-I heard a rumor…” she whispered, “I heard a rumor Ben was alive.”  
Ben felt a shudder go through his body. It was electric and painful and for a moment he was excited, it had worked, he was alive he was-  
Allison was crying. When Ben tried to call her name she didn’t respond.  
“I heard a rumor,” she tried again, “that Ben never died.”  
Again, the electric tingle. It was gone sooner this time. Allison’s hand shot forward and grabbed the foot of the statue.  
“Dammit, I heard a rumor my brother was alive again! I heard a rumor he never died! I heard a rumor that Ben was here right now!”  
And then she cried. Ben drifted over and cried too.

(And he wanted to tell her, then, that he was there. He always had been there. He always would be there. As all of them grew and changed and lived he would be around them. A constant weight, a running memory of everything they would do without him. A constant burning ache of a life he never had)  
Ben placed his hand over Allison’s  
He knew neither of them could feel it.  
“I am here, Allison.”  
And for a moment, just a moment, she looked up. She looked at him.  
“I miss you, Ben,” she gasped softly.  
Ben pulled his hand away.  
“I miss you more.”


	3. The Boy

Ben tried to visit number five. He tried and tried and tried. He tried until he was weak and flickering. He tried until the monsters pooling in his stomach roared in annoyance. He tried until even Klaus, high Klaus, asked if he was okay.

But Ben couldn’t find him.

(He would have loved to, then, and followed him around. Figured out where he was and go back to tell Klaus. The other members of the family would listen. Well...Luther wouldn’t, he was on the moon. But Diego would. And Allison would. And they could find Five and bring him home. Make him sandwitches, give him hugs)

So instead Ben went through the house day after day to find new things that reminded him of old five. He knew Five wasn’t coming home, but he also knew that the best way to keep someone close was to think of them. If no one else was going to do it, Ben was.

Mon changed his sheets every week. She changed all of their sheets, even Ben’s, but for some reason it was so much worse that she changed his because it felt like hope. Like any day he would wander through the door and have a place to sleep, clean sheets and a clean room.

Vanya left books in there once in a while, when she thought no one was looking.

In all honesty, Ben and Five had never been close. Close in number, sure, but in personality they were almost entirely opposite. Where Ben wanted to hang back in fights, not be noticed, not be photographed, and not be useful, Five wanted to be in the spotlight of everything. He jumped from place to place with the skill and bravery of a man ten times his age. He was outgoing and rebellious and it used to scare Ben.

But he never wanted Five gone.  
All the sudden there had been a gap in the house; four and six did not come next to one another. 

(Which, ironically, Ben supposed they now did. Perhaps Five’s disappearance had been an omen; a prophecy for the unique and forced relationship Ben had with number four now)

It was harder, then, without Five. Ben had resented him, in a way, his absence made father stricter. Mom sadder. Everyone more tense. It meant Ben had to fight more, had to prove more. But Ben could never hate number five. He couldn’t hate any of them. They were the only things he had.

The manor was full of things that reminded Ben of Five. Knives, books, doorways. Soon everything looked like Five.

Ben wondered, then, if Five ever came home and Ben was the only one left, the only one here. He wondered if Five would ever come home, if he was even still alive. 

Ben hoped he was.

Because if Five was dead it meant that Five would bear the eternal torment of loneliness rather than see any of them again.

And Ben didn’t want to think they’d failed him so bad.


	4. The Spaceboy

Luther was hard to visit on the moon; and when Ben finally did he nearly shot his consciousness right back to earth when Luther said his name.

The robot didn’t look anything like him, Ben decided, and was maybe just a little miffed that Luther couldn’t have a nicer-looking robot to name after him. Whether Ben the robot was Ben the robot because Luther was lonely, guilty, or overly-sentimental, ghost Ben didn’t know. He just hoped Luther got a little consolation.

Before the moon, often Ben would find Luther up late, fiddling with things or reading books about space or working out. It was just the two of them in that mansion for so long, that Luther became Ben’s most constant source of surprise. Sometimes it was the way Luther would stop their mother to tell her how nice her eyes looked. Sometimes it was the way he would make faces at himself in the mirror when he was working out. Sometimes it was the way Luther would stand outside by his statue and place his hand on the knee of it, ever so gently. Sometimes it was the way he danced.

(And Ben wished, then, to go back so badly then, to tell young Luther the way he listened to the songs he most hated on his albums over and over now. How those discs he bought because he liked just one song were full of wonders that made Luther move like he was born to do it. How the dances he had alone always felt better because everyone knew Luther was better when no one was looking. He wished he could play young Luther those songs, because he wanted to dance too. Dance with Luther the way they all had when they were younger, twirling around and living generally like they didn’t have anything to lose again.)

Sometimes Ben would follow Luther on missions, but he didn’t like to do that much. Oftentimes Luther got hurt, and Ben never liked it when he had to see his siblings burn or bruise or bleed. Once or twice Ben tagged along, but no more.

Luther, however, did see him once. Just once. Just before the injection and the changing, the growth and the grotesque way his body shifted and changed. Luther had been laying on the table and Ben was hovering just around his bedside when suddenly Luther was across from him. Still burned, still bloody. And it was so strange, then, to see two of his brother. One on the table, laying there, previously whimpering softly and now silent, and one standing before him, solid as a rock. It brought Ben back to his own death, looking down and thinking 'hey that's me' before realize it wasn't anymore. But Luther wasn't looking down, no, the Luther that stood before Ben was looking at Ben with wide eyes and clenched fists. He opened his mouth and the word that came out was like rapture

“Ben?!”

And Ben had wanted to sob, then, to cry...because this was his big brother. Number One. Luther. Luther and Ben, with five numbers between them always and suddenly it was just the two of them. Suddenly the house wasn't empty, suddenly someone could see him. Ben wanted to say so much that he didn't manage to say anything at all, he had been too stuck on the realization that finally, someone in this stupid big house could see him.

“Ben I-”

But then Grace had stuck the needle into his arm and Luther was gone, and when Luther woke up he didn’t remember seeing Ben.

Although; Ben thought, maybe he did. A small part, maybe, still stuck around.

Because after all, the robot on the moon wasn’t named Klaus, or Vanya, or Allison.

Luther’s only friend on the moon was named Ben.


	5. The Seance

It was hard; to stick around when all the drugs wanted to shut them away from one another, but Klaus was the only person Ben had left in this world, and he wasn’t about to let pills take him and his brother away.

At first, Klaus and Ben were as awkward as new college roommates; occupying a space together that neither of them really knew how to claim. Sometimes Klaus would just stare at Ben, for hours and hours, no matter where they were. It bothered them both.

The first time they spoke was at Klaus’ favorite club. 

“D’ya want one?”

Klaus poured a shot out and then looked at Ben. Stared Ben dead in the eyes.

“Me?”

Klaus jerked his head in a nod, “yeah you. Drink with your big brother.”

The joke hurt, like a punch to the chest Ben no longer had. It was one Klaus had made so often to them growing up, to all of them, except the three before him. A joke they hadn’t heard in so long, all together. It had been so long since they’d seen one another.

In the end, Klaus ended up taking Ben’s shot for him. And three more after that, before he turned from the bar and went to sling his arm over Ben’s shoulder. It ended with Klaus falling flat on his face.

(And Ben wanted, so badly then, to go back and tell Klaus not to have that first drink. Klaus, who had always been so good at dancing, walking, balancing. The lightest on his feet, who looked better in tutus than Allison did, who stood more proud in heels than her too. Ben wanted to beg his brother to leave the drugs and the drinking behind, to leave the pain and the fear. Take up dancing. Him and Vanya could have won the X factor)

“I’m starved, little bro. Where do you want to grab a bite?”

Ben remembered, then, how every time they would sneak out and Ben would get nervous, how Klaus would take his arm and pull him close, murmuring stupid jokes. It never made Ben less nervous, but it helped. It was something. 

But that was always Klaus. For everyone around him; always something. Until no one gave anything back, that is.

“Well?!”

“I...uh…” 

Ben stared at the twenty year old before him, scrawny, bruised, and looking like he had the world’s worst idea two brain cells away from completion.

“Waffles.”

Klaus nodded once, “Waffles it is.”

He stumbled. Ben tried to catch his arm.

It was one of the rare times he forgot that he couldn’t.


End file.
